


Rick Meets the New Neighbor

by Lany_B



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: He's my favorite, I made this cause I don't like how much ricks shit on, My First Work in This Fandom, Not Canon Compliant, Prolly OOC, Self-Indulgent, even if it's justified, no beta we die like men, rick doesn't fuck our original character here, this is wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27938037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lany_B/pseuds/Lany_B
Summary: Rick, now bottom of the family food chain, is done with dealing with the family's attitude and stops bringing any of them on adventures, and he gets a new neighbor, who happens to like science, but she isn't aware anyone can hear her when she takes her walks.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationships - Relationship
Kudos: 6





	Rick Meets the New Neighbor

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after watching season four, I didn't finish the last episode cause I can't stand when they shit on rick, so I’m assuming for this that the beth's stayed in contact but the warrior went off to fight the law further, if not, well I don't really care

Rick was frankly said, done with his families shit, his only saving grace at the moment was the new neighbors distracting his family from trying to shit on him constantly, Morty's been even more of an ass lately, along with summer, not that beth is letting the clone thing go anytime soon and jerry the idiot that he hates has been sending him condescending looks constantly, so done with their shit was an understatement, he was about two days from shooting them all in the face and leaving the dimension, so, like originally said the new neighbors were his family's last saving grace it was apparently just a mom, dad, and two daughters only one of which actually moving with the family, not to mention the two yappy dogs, rick had decided as soon as they showed up to just ignore he had new neighbors completely and work on some dumb mindless shit for a while that worked his brain but he wouldn’t be too stressed to finish since he was so close to blowing a gasket anyway

It’d been about two weeks since they moved in and now that they were mostly settled it seemed as if the daughter would be a nuisance, she wasn’t directly bothering him, but he liked to work with the garage open during the day and she constantly took walks listening to music and singing along, out loud, badly, he quickly learned she did homeschooling and finished her days worth of work in an hour or two and liked spending the rest of her day goofing off, which often consisted of just taking long ass walks or loudly talking to her friend over the phone, which he noticed was mostly her bitching about stupid shit, all in all just the worst neighbor for him to have, luckily she either didn’t give a shit what he did or just didn’t seem to notice, but eventually he got tired of her banshee screeching and decided to ask her to kindly shut the fuck up, he walked up and did just that as she was on another one of her stupid walks, she unplugged one of her ear buds and looked at him as he asked her to shut her mouth and seemed unfazed, might be, or she has the best poker face, and responded “oh.. Uh.. sorry... I have a tendency not to notice when I’m being really loud, I’ll try not to but if I start to particularly loudly just come up and ask me to stop, I don’t want to bother you too much and ruin whatever retirement you have going on right now” she didn’t seem like a bitch at least

Rick deeply regretted talking to her now, she would randomly stop in front of the garage and watch him work for like a half hour unless he sent her an annoyed look, and he came to the conclusion she just didn’t notice him before, and now that she would stop there the family took notice of her interest in ricks little tinkering and started annoying him to try to teach her neat things about science or whatever, one plus is that the singing mostly stopped, and when she did sing it was significantly quieter and less bad, not great still, and certain songs sounded decent, but now he didn’t feel like making himself go deaf, he also recently actually looked at her so that he didn’t recognise some teenager solely from her voice, cause that's kinda weird, she had poofy curly brown hair and big round brown doe eyes, she looked like a tall thirteen year old honestly, she wore a sweater that swallowed her form it was dark grey with thin black stripes on it, and under that she had a black dress shirt, other than that she wore dark blue skinny jeans and black tennis shoes, and if it was vaguely bright out she was seen in black sunglasses or a black baseball cap, she honestly wore a lot of black and normally that meant they were trying too hard to be edgy but with her hair as big and puffy as it was he doubted that was the point  
She started asking questions, so he eventually learned some things about her, like her name, Alaina, or the fact that she had depressing, if true, world views, that she rambles, and who can forget that she’s actually fifteen and just has a major baby face that isn’t helped by the sweater she swims in, oh and when he gets a little stuck on what little tweaks might help she has really good suggestions, she in no way understands how the machines work, but she at least has a basic knowledge of ‘hey, that thing was important earlier’, one thing he appreciates about her company is that she isn’t bothered by him being an ass and him being a genuinely bad person and still thinks he’s really fucking cool, which she should, but lately he hasn’t seen enough amazement at his genius just exasperation so her telling him exactly how cool him and his inventions are boost his ego just a little

Summer and Morty seem to have teamed up in the effort of discouraging her from putting him on a pedestal, which yeah he’d rather she didn’t but with that effort, they’ve tried to get her to stop coming around to watch him work, and while he wouldn’t care that much, she reminds him of when he wasn’t constantly shit on so he’s a little upset, it seems like they just don’t want people being nice to him, he’s just glad beth and jerry are leaving it alone, or else her parents would probably get involved, and he realized recently that Morty is done going on adventures with him, and while normally he’d just force him, he’s getting really sick of his attitude, so he just leaves it be for now

He realized recently that while she isn’t any kind of genius and certainly isn’t going to grow up into anything super important, she does absorb information about science pretty well, you couldn’t ask her about anything more than fifth-grade level math or history and get an actual answer but, ask her about why the rain smells good and she could tell you, nothing groundbreaking but it makes him not feel like he’s talking to an automated question machine, but something that will actually retain the information better than Morty so he won’t have to repeat himself constantly, he also realized that with the basic knowledge on how something worked and looking at the thing for a few minutes she could generally fix it if it was having issues, which he found convenient and she seemed to enjoy fixing things

Rick at some point recognized the weird mentor-student friendship like bond he’d formed and got a little annoyed and took that out on the other end of the said weird bond, who seemed to not give two shits about his attitude and straight up told him that if he was tired of her she’d leave him alone, that made him calm down because now he knew that if he suddenly did get annoyed with her she wouldn’t bother him for answers like a clingy ex, it also chilled him out a little into accepting that it was nice to have someone who actually listened to explain things to, someone who wouldn’t ask questions insistently, so he started holding it over summer and Morty’s heads that they were sub-par in terms of science companion, they didn’t seem to care all that much, but they appear to be a little upset that he doesn’t miss having them around to bother him

Rick started wishing that instead of Morty he had an Alaina from the beginning, he had started taking her on some smaller adventures and he realized that, like summer, she was in her element shooting things in the head and having little at the moment good ideas, she didn’t constantly nag him like summer though, she just went along with it and enjoyed the ride, he’s not saying she doesn’t have her flaws, while she isn’t constantly talking about clothes, she is a teenage girl and will see shiny bobbles and want them, or the fact that she’ll get distracted by pretty enough boys that are genuinely afraid of her, not to mention if something doesn’t actually catch her interest she’ll retain zero knowledge and while that doesn’t happen often with the things they do, it can be annoying when it does, but fuck if she isn’t a better adventurer than Morty, and he thanks the nonexistent deities that she isn’t as bitchy as summer

Rick noticed that summer and morty were a bit jealous, they started to ask him if he needed any help and he’s relished in saying that, no Alaina’s coming with him, or, no Alaina already knows how it works and is helping him tweak (random so and so), he wouldn’t say he’s proud, far from it, she’s still an idiot that can’t completely grasp onto the idea of the multiverse, but he loves to hold it over his grandchildren that ditched him that he doesn’t need them so if he needs to he’ll rub it into their faces that they are about as useful as gum stuck to his heel by showing off only the good qualities that Alaina displays, cause he’s petty like that, and it seems like she was as well, she started to hang around the smith house and just watching tv or sitting around on her phone, at this point in time he’s absolutely giddy to shit on the smith siblings with his new favorite teenager, not that there was much competition to begin with, who apparently started to dislike them for shitting on him, which also pleased him, he had his own angsty teen attack dog and all he had to do was be an asshole, or himself

Rick had only recently learnt more personal things about Alaina, like what she planned to be in the future or her hobbies and stuff, and he can’t say he’s impressed he’d expected something sciencey to be honest, but no, she just wants to own a bakery and have a cat, maybe marry someone if she feels the inclination, though she has said that children are not something she wants, which he’s glad for, as reluctant as he is to admit it, she feels like a daughter that he doesn’t have coustady over, and he doesn’t want her dumb little humble dream ruined by children, he also learned she has a boyfriend, not that he asked her, and he definately didn’t want to get to know him down to his sweater size without ever meeting him, he learned she drew, and painted, and read, she for some reason stared showing off her art to him and talking about books she was reading, not that he listened very intently, but it didn’t appear she expected him to, eventually he even met a friend of hers named kat, she seemed chill and generally just lounged around in Alaina’s personal space, she wasn’t as energetic as Alaina, and she wasn’t as attentive either, she just wanted to be in her friends presence, which he respected, she wasn’t bothering anybody, though when Alaina went inside to get herself a drink she asked him if he had any shady intentions with her ‘wifey’ he just fake gagged and said “gross” and went back to saudering, which seemed to satisfy her and as soon as Alaina came back her friend told her she had to leave, and proceeded to be picked up by her friend in a hug and pat on the head before she left

He doesn’t know when he started to hang around her even when he didn’t have a goal in mind, but he did, and he realized when she didn’t have something specific to talk about she was near-silent, and he also realized she’s completely cool with him doing whatever drugs he wants, he tried to offer her some, she declined and said “I’ve been high once, and I didn’t like it, I prefer feeling awake and aware, or just taking a nap” he doesn’t know why but that made him happy, probably cause he’ll never have to worry about her forming a dependency on vices, meaning he won’t ever have to drag her out of an addiction

When he started hanging around her he started to take walks with her instead of watching tv, it was nice, it got him away from his family and while he didn’t particalrily enjoy the sights or people, he liked the companionable silence that they had whenever she didn’t have some stupid philisophical question that they’d debate, with as many cuss words as possible with their combined potty mouth dictionary, he liked that she didn’t try to small talk, that kinda shit got annoying very quickly, soon they started taking walks in alternate dimenions that the air wouldn’t kill them, that were generally pretty safe, seeing as while she might be content with the same sights and the same people, he was most certainly not, so he started with distinctly pretty dimensions to get her on board with the idea, then they went on to more rugged ones that felt more like hiking, and soon they just walked around random places thet they felt would be somewhat entertaining, it felt like when he was younger and still exploring the multiverse for the fuck of it, but way less fast paced and important feeling, no hero complex, just visiting and not bothering whatever dictator they ran into, or whatever conspiracies they uncovered on accident, it felt like he was just observing the multiverse, instead of actually participating in it, he thought it would’ve been more frustrating, but it felt more relaxing than anything, felt less pressure and generally just felt like he could take a nap in a grassy field if that made sense

He took a sample of Alaina’s blood, and saved all of her current memories, and planned to save them once a month, even checked a couple of universes to see what she was like in them, she changed a lot in all the ones that even had her moving into his neighborhood, he did all this because he realized he’d like to keep adventuring with her, and he’d rather her not dead, while he definitely wouldn’t cry and would barely mourn, she was fun, she wasn’t weird about a 70-year-old man getting puss and would actually be his little wing woman, which girls apparently found endearing, which he thought was weird but whatever, probably had something to do with maternal instinct

The smith family had realised that, even if he wouldn’t admit it, rick was happier, it could just be because he didn’t need to get along with either morty or summer to have help on his adventures, but it seemed like more than that, he seemed like he wasn’t constantly putting deadlines on himself for no reason, and while they were all a little upset he got that while still being an asshole and without apologising for shit beth and morty were willing to accept that while he may not deserve it he did find it, and it made sense to them that it wasn’t in love or anything, just a friend who liked to learn new things and kick ass with him, not to mention that she had what you might call an old soul, and rick definately had a young one, for some reason though, jerry and summer seemed spiteful and ready to say some stupid shit, which they did summer started it by kinda picking on Alaina by asking if she had some weird thing for rick, and that she wouldn’t judge her, one of her best friends married someone twice her age, Alaina made a face and said “one of the few things that turn me off is incredibly large age gaps, not to mention i have a boyfriend” and went back to looking at her phone, jerry took a similar approach but with rick and more accusatory, which seemed to piss rick off enough to threaten shooting jerry’s dick off for even suggesting it again, which a loud laugh was heard from the next room from Alaina

The smiths soon met Alaina’s family and realized that they were all weird and thought ricks assholery was funny even when directed at them, and that Alaina disliked being around them like most teenage girls, and that she was much more subdued around them, barely able to get a word in, and she didn’t cuss like a sailor like usual, which summer seemed to want to snitch on all of the things she’s sure Alaina’s parents wouldn’t like, she got a look from beth

They soon met the elusive boyfriend and he was not what the family, not subjected to her rambling, was expecting, he was a bit shorter than her, and had a big poof of dark curls atop his head, summer and morty recognised him, and summer kinda glared at him, the whole school, apart from his friends, thought he was copying the ethan summer dated, he wore grey sweatshirts, played guitar, he was white, and his name was also ethan, that was pretty much where the similarities ended though, right after Alaina let him in he just stood awkwardly and waved, not that that lasted long since soon he was dragged around by Alaina, and soon to the garage, they could hear her bragging about how smart he was for how stupid what they were tought was, and how, apparently, he could play several instuments, beth and jerry went off to do whatever they do and summer and morty just sat in the living room silently then morty said “why does it feel like we got replaced really fast? And not even by alternate versions of ourselves?” summer sighed “because we were morty, we shouldn’t expect our asshole grandpa to put up with our shit, and i have no doubt that once she gets annoying, or confident enough in their relationship to be sassy and kinda shit on him, he’ll ditch her too, that’s what he does, he bail’s like you said a while ago” morty hummed “maybe, but she’s already sarcastic with him, it’s like she’s actually entertained by him being a dick, even when he insults her directly, not that long ago i saw him copying her memories and taking a blood sample, not to mention she has no qualms with the adventures they go on” before he could fully finish his thought summer interrupted him “i hope you’re not implying that we’re the assholes in this situation” morty sighed “no, that’s not what i’m implying, he doesn’t know which of his daughters is a clone, he’s an asshole, we’ve figured that out, i’m just thinking that maybe this was what he was expecting out of his morty and summer, and that’s why he got so annoyed with us, he probably wasn’t hoping for a spineless fourteen year old boy and typical seventeen year old girl, and maybe yeah while adventuring we developed thicker skin, we never started actually learning little things about his inventions so that we could fix them or try to make him any happier, and we, a lot of the time, pushed our beliefs on him, or used him as a way to take out our frustrations, and we never treated him like an actual grandpa, i saw Alaina showing rick something she painted she looked so proud of it too, i’ve seen them just walk around in silence, they seem like friends more than, like, we did” rick walked by “that’s gay, she’s just cool, you’re over anylising it” then walked away again summer pointed in rick’s direction and said “i agree with him”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear your criticisms, but be easy on my grammar, I wrote this with no beta, but, yeah I'm trying to improve my writing


End file.
